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Fourth Annual High School Policy Conference

This year Congress has the opportunity to improve high schools as it takes up the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The question is whether Congress has the will. The time is ripe to ensure those deliberations adequately address the needs of high schools.

On October 4-5, the Alliance for Excellent Education convened local, state, and national education leaders to discuss federal strategies for improving the achievement of our nation’s struggling middle and high school students. Last year’s conference examined the consensus that has been building around a federal agenda for high school reform. Leveraging that momentum, this year’s conference focused on explicit policies that should be included in NCLB to improve high schools.

This conference provided policymakers, educators, and other stakeholders with concrete information about and recommendations for what Congress should do to improve the country’s high schools. Federal policymakers will be making decisions impacting American high schools; this conference supports their efforts to make sure those decisions are wise and effective.

U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) and U.S Congressman Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX), along with Democratic and Republican staff from the Senate and House education committees, were emphatic that the needs of the nation’s secondary schools and their students would be addressed in the revision of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that is currently being negotiated by Congress. They were among the speakers at the October 4-5 national high school policy conference hosted by the Alliance for Excellent Education, which brought together local, state, and national education leaders to discuss federal strategies for improving the achievement and attainment levels of the nation’s struggling middle and high school students.

I. Welcome
Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, notes that the conference occurred on the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, and only a few days after the 50th anniversary of the forced integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, when President Dwight Eisenhower ordered federal troops to escort nine African American students into the school building.

Wise describes both events as watershed moments for the nation’s education system. Sputnik provided tangible evidence that the U.S. was no longer the world leader in space exploration and galvanized the public and the government to usher in new reforms in education, particularly in the fields of science and math. And Wise calls the integration by the “Little Rock Nine” of Central High one of the first times that the federal government stated affirmatively that every child should get a quality education. While recognizing that the country has made a lot of gains since 1957, Wise says it had much more work to do.

II. In Need of Improvement: NCLB and High Schools Audio*Bethany Little, vice president for policy and federal advocacy at the Alliance for Excellent Education, lays out the concerns of many educators and advocates regarding the current limitations of NCLB related to secondary schools. She notes that the law provides few of the supports that are critical to significantly improving low-performing secondary schools and that it provides little help for students in danger of dropping out.

A panel of congressional staff from the majority and minority staffs of the House Education and Labor Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee—the two committees responsible for reauthorizing NCLB—discuss how the reauthorization could improve the nation’s secondary schools.

Acknowledging that high schools were largely left out of the NCLB when it was debated in 2001, the panel emphasizes that emerging research now provided them with the data necessary to make high school reform a significant part of NCLB reauthorization. They now know where dropouts go to school, which students are most at risk of dropping out when they enter ninth grade, and which interventions will work to improve student performance.

With this data, panelists say they were able to include several high school initiatives in the draft plan to reauthorize NCLB, including a Graduation Promise Fund to turn around high schools with low graduation rates, a Striving Readers program to help older students who struggle to read and write at grade level, and a greater emphasis on graduation rate accountability. They also discuss incentives for states to raise standards and improve accountability and ways to reduce the teacher distribution gap between low- and high-poverty schools.

III. Internationally Benchmarking 21st Century StandardsAndreas Schleicher describes the gaps between high school performance and college trends in the United States and other countries. His comprehensive presentation uses detailed graphs and data from the OECD’s Education at a Glance.

Schleicher explains that while the United States still possesses the world’s most educated workforce, much of America’s competitive edge was due to history and to the actions that the United States took after World War II; the GI Bill, for example, provided for college or vocational education for returning World War II veterans. Since the 1960s, other countries have caught up with and surpassed the United States in the percentage of individuals with high school diplomas and college degrees.

Schleicher also discusses the three common elements present in the education systems of the highest-performing countries: high, ambitious, universal standards; intelligent accountability and intervention; and personalized learning. And, noting that “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers,” Schleicher says that the highest-performing countries also possessed highly selective teacher programs and, in addition to attracting the best candidates into the profession, also had good programs such as career pathways in place to retain teachers in the profession and to advance them in their careers.

Andreas Schleicher, Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division (Directorate for Education), OECD

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IV. College and Work Readiness: Raising Standards and Improving Assessments Audio*Picking up on the theme of state standards, this panel debates whether the federal government should mandate a common national test as a way to raise state standards. During discussion, the panel raises several options, with some favoring a national standard and others preferring that states work together to develop a common test, perhaps with incentives from the federal government for doing so.

V. Accountability for What Matters: Measuring High Schools Audio*Even if states were to raise their standards, NCLB as currently written does a poor job measuring high school performance and identifying and prioritizing low-performing schools. That was the point made by the panel on high school accountability. Panelists also discuss how the reauthorization of NCLB could bring about greater accountability for high schools. In particular, panelists agree that a revised NCLB had to do a better job of holding high schools accountable for graduation rates.

VI. Ensuring Systemic Improvement: Turning Around Low-Performing High Schools Audio*The question of how to turn around low-performing high schools once they were identified provokes a lively discussion on the panel, with JoEllen Lynch of the New York City Department of Education and Michael Durr the principal at John Hope High School, Chicago, IL, sharing strategies that were successful in their work. The panel also discusses successful strategies for turning around low-performing schools, including the importance of data, greater parental involvement, and smaller learning communities.

U.S. Representative Rubén Hinojosa makes a surprise appearance at the conference to talk about the Graduation Promise Act (GPA), of which he is the chief sponsor in the House of Representatives, and his efforts as the Chairman of the House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Higher Education, Life Long Learning and Competitiveness.

VII. ReceptionAt a reception co-hosted by Jobs for the Future and the Alliance for Excellent Education, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, declares that “a good quality education is back on the national agenda.” Kennedy talks about several pieces of legislation moving through Congress to improve high school graduation rates, including the Graduation Promise Act and the reauthorization of NCLB. He also references the America Competes Act, which is designed to strengthen educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and was signed into law by President Bush earlier this summer.

The reception also honors Dr. Bob Balfanz, a research scientist at Johns Hopkins University, who received the “Every Child a Graduate Award” from the Alliance for Excellent Education for his outstanding commitment to improving America’s secondary schools and for his leadership in the promotion of effective policies and practices that will help all students to graduate from high school prepared for college, work, and success in life.

I. Improving Teacher Effectiveness in Low-Performing High SchoolsAudio*
The first panel on day two of the conference discusses the very important role that teachers play in helping to turn around the lowest-performing schools and students. Panelists talk about how the federal government can evaluate teachers and teacher effectiveness. While panelists discuss teacher performance pay, bonuses, and other incentives to attract teachers to hard-to-staff schools, they also agree that teacher supports (such as mentoring, comprehensive induction programs, and common planning time) played a very important role.

II. The High School of the 21st Century: Innovating for Equity and ExcellenceAudio*
The last panel of the conference discusses the features that a high school for the twenty-first century should possess to ensure that students graduate prepared for college or work. Some popular suggestions include rigorous curriculum, high expectations for students, extended learning time, and the opportunity for students to engage in coursework that was relevant to the real world. Along these lines, panelists express a desire to move away from the factory model of schooling where students moved from class to class and knowledge was “attached” to them, to a medical model where students perform analysis and exercise their skills in actual work, whether through internships or early college opportunities.

III. LUNCH with Keynote Remarks Audio*Debra Schum, the Chief Academic Officer of the New Orleans Recovery School District talks about efforts underway in New Orleans around school reform and the vision that Paul Vallas, the new superintendent of the New Orleans Recovery School District, has for high school redesign in the city.

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